Police Close Down Tompkins After 7-Eleven Window Is Smashed [Updated]

The police closed down Tompkins Square Park tonight after a window of a 7-Eleven was smashed, seemingly by protesters.

Around 9:20 p.m., Tim Pool, a livecaster of Occupy Wall Street events, filmed police cars blocking off Tompkins Square Park. In the video embedded above, Mr. Pool reports hearing that, after the Anarchist Book Fair earlier today, a “black bloc” formed and “there was a lot of property destruction, a few windows broken. We heard a few people tried to smash some Starbucks windows and ‘some Mafioso-looking guys came out with big poles and started swinging them.’”

In the video, witnesses say protesters went from Astor Place to Tompkins Square Park, where they blended into the crowd after police cars pulled up. EV Grieve posted a photo of the smashed window of the 7-Eleven on St. Marks Place. The photo was originally tweeted by @Ewingweb, who wrote, “About 50 ppl dressed in black bashing windows, attacking 7-11 sign, chanting ‘nypd go to hell.’”

Christopher Robbins, a reporter for Gothamist, tweeted that police blocked off East Sixth Street between Avenues A and B, where witnesses told him a party for the Anarchist Book Fair took place at the Sixth Street Community Center.

We’ll have more news as it becomes available. If you saw anything, e-mail us, post your photos to our Flickr pool, or tell us about it in the comments.

Update | 12:25 a.m. @Mcompost, a self-described anarchist legal worker, tweeted from the scene, describing the march as a “very loosely organized anti-police protest” of about 60 people. He witnessed bottles flying – “These folks are making oo look like a bunch of hippies! so many bottles” – and said the march ended abruptly: “And poof, they’re gone! Crowd split up, presumably to regroup elsewhere.”

Update | 10:30 a.m. Gothamist now reports that two people were arrested outside of the Sixth Street Community Center after a complaint of bottles being thrown from the roof. The degree to which last night’s events were tied to Occupy Wall Street remains uncertain, but Ray’s Candy Store tweets that Occupy fries are no more: “#OWS – Your actions tonight in the #EastVillage were abhorrent,” the soda fountain wrote in one tweet, using stronger language in others.

9 Comments

Me and some friends were walking right in front of them, we really didn’t know what was going on. We saw them surround the Starbucks and we started walking, and then suddenly the group went from two blocks away from us to like ON the same block and we ran and turned off on 1st ave. As the group passed down St Marks, we saw them throwing the garbage cans and newspaper boxes and shit in the street and whatnot. I’m glad we didn’t get caught up in that. I don’t even get the meaning of the protest and honestly all of that seemed so unnecessary.

we received small notices that a march was planned to protest police brutality +++ The notices were handed out at the anarchist bookfair (judson church), and said the March would begin at 8PM April 14.at washington Square

At about 8:30PM, 200-300 marched out of Washington Square on Thompson, first left east to Broadway (stopping lots of traffic and scattering garbage, chanting “we are Sean Bell”)

Then North on Broadway to Astor….after having gotten some long steel poles during the march, they could not smash Starbucks windows/plexyglass, but some people seemed to come out of Starbucks to grab the poles (no injuries)

Some marchers continued east on St Marks to Ave A (cops chased) South on A to East 6th then West ( i saw somebody attempt to smash an unmarked police car window just East of First Ave on East 6th Street) no injuries!)

I later (9:30PM) went back to WSq park, with some other marchers and at about 10PM one of those marchers rec’d a tweet stating “unruly crowd at Thompkins Square–Police close Park…”

Hi DP–you sound as if you may be thinking that there’s people doing things that they should not (spies/traitors and the like)—everywhere you turn, another government employee shows up who actually wants the current stste of affairs to continue,,,government (city, state, federal+contractors, relatives and parasites) is the enemy!

This isn’t a “movement”. It is group therapy for a bunch of angry disenfranchised acting-out children. They should be given a choice of enlistment in the military or serious jail time…either would probably do them some good.

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